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‘Unveiling’ is a prelude to restoring historic tower

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By Alma Gaul | Friday, April 11, 2008 | No comments posted

The casual observer might think Bryan Pattschull is a little bit crazy.

Last fall, he and David Cordes bought a vacant house next door to theirs in Rock Island’s Broadway Historic District. The circa-1868 house needs just about everything, beginning with all-new plumbing, heating and electrical systems, and now they are preparing to remove the one element that looks to be in good shape: the vinyl siding on the outside.

The property at 824 20th St. is one of two homes that will participate in the neighborhood association’s Great Unveiling on Saturday, April 19. Volunteers will gather with ladders and crowbars to rip off the vinyl, giving a better indication of what the house looked like when it was built just three years after the Civil War.

To people who are committed to preserving the Quad-Cities’ historic neighborhoods, this isn’t crazy at all. The idea is that synthetic siding is not appropriate to the time period in which the home was built and thereby detracts from the neighborhood’s character.

“Unveilings” began in Broadway about 1990 and were an annual ritual for more than 10 years. After a six-year hiatus, they resumed last year.

The Pattschull/Cordes property is known as the Jackson home for William Jackson, who was the “father of Rock Island parks.” Jackson bought the home when it was about six years old and lived in it until the 1920s.

Pattschull and Cordes live in a brick home they are restoring to showplace quality, and they want to protect their investment by improving the Broadway neighborhood. “I would like to get it back to the point where it is an asset to the neighborhood instead of an eyesore,” Pattschull said of the Jackson home.

The house was once divided into four apartments, two upstairs and two downstairs. Pattschull has pretty well removed all of the false walls as well as the kitchens and bathrooms and is ready to begin reconstructing the original, single-family floor plan.

He hopes to get the mechanical systems installed this year and rebuild the center tower. The home has an unusual plan in which an elliptical spiral staircase rises immediately left of the front door in the center of the house and ascends to the third-floor tower.

The other home that will be “unveiled” Saturday belongs to Mark Matthews at 820 22nd St.

Area resident Daryl Empen said the unveilings “show a sense of pride, of continued rejuvenation of the neighborhood,” which is especially important given the current housing market.

Broadway has come a long way in 20 years, he said. Many homes have been restored so that “walking down the street gives a sense of walking back in history,” he added.

Alma Gaul can be contacted at (563) 383-2324 or agaul@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.